A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 7 (Soul of a Mac)

Welcome to the HitchHiker’s Guide to the Macintosh.

Firstly, I want to say thanks to all the people who emailed me or left feedback on the site in relation to my six-part history of the Mac feature. Hopefully many of you will keep reading the column as I move on to other topics.

It is human nature to anthropomorphise the objects around us – we all like to think that our pets have the same sort of thoughts as we do and we like to think that the objects around us have personalities. Can you honestly say that as a child you never looked at a car and thought of the headlamps as eyes and the radiator as a mouth with an expression?

Well, in this column I want to explore the aspects that give the Mac a distinct personality and ask ‘What is the soul of a Mac?’

Continue Reading »

Samsonite XT780
This review is on a piece of hardware that is usually given only a slight afterthought. I’m talking about the case your mac goes into. I’ve had a Samsonite XT780 for about 3 months and I’d say its a perfect mac companion. The front semi-lockable (its as if you’re locking a door by turning a knob) compartment holds your chargers and portable mice. The Apple charger fits perfectly into one of the compartments, as does the Apple mouse.

Now, onto the most important feature: the computer. If you have a 15 inch powerbook or 14 inch ibook, then you’re in luck. It fits perfectly. But if you have anything else, it’s not going to fit snug enough to provide adequate protection.

There are pockets galore on the TX780, but many of them I found rather unhelpful. A few papers and a small paperback book can fit into the final back compartment- that much I understand. But there are some pockets I cannot find a use for. For instance, in the front compartment where the charger and mouse holders are, are 3 small pockets less than an inch deep. I can’t even fit my iPod firewire cord in it. Flipping back to the other end of the bag, there is a zipper for a sizable pocket. However, the stitching on the bag (and the fact that its leather) doesn’t allow for expanding, so you’re left with a large pocket that can only hold very wide thin things, I suppose A magazine or ONE legal pad may fit in there.

Overall though, the bag looks smart, and has what I look for in a bag, plenty of pockets. Although some seem confusing and useless.

You didn’t do this mouse dissection in biology class. This is so cool. If you want to get a great look on what makes the new Mighty Mouse tick, head over and checkout this great article on ArsTechnica. Head over and read the full article, it gives more gruesome picts and all the gory details.

A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 6 (in which the Mac rocks)

Welcome back to my column – I imagine that many readers will be wondering when this insight into the past of the Mac will end – well this is the final part of the saga. The story flows much like Star Wars if you’ll allow me to recap with a strained analogy.

The first part of our story was the discovery of computers and the growth of Apple computers with the Apple II. Next came the action packed ordeal of developing the Mac, but this ended in the sad loss of one of the Mac’s parents – Steve Jobs. No clones though, they didn’t attack quite yet.
By part three, things had gone seriously pear-shaped with Apple doomed to financial and technological purgatory.
In part four, a New Hope was revived with the purchase of NeXT. Last week, I covered the story of how Apple took that and rebuilt the Mac OS – and this is largely where the analogy falls down – no-one gets their hand cut off. However, The Mac Strikes Back would be a fitting title for that section.
But in this final part we will see how the story unfolds up to now and word count allowing, even ponder the future. This is the story of the triumphant Return of the Mac.

Continue Reading »

FlexPed™ will offer the flexible mounting and positioning of the ever popular THOUGHT OUT designed PedHead™. The new FlexPed™ will cradle portable devices virtually anywhere including cars, boats, and walls etc. The product will be available in September for under $50.00. For more information please see www.thoughtout.biz (in a few days).

The PedHead™ mechanism that can also be found on the Ped2™ which allows setup adjustability for virtually all devices including the design inspired iPod with or without cases or skins.

Images (click to enlarge)

Reinvented Software is proud to announce the release of Feeder 1.2. Feeder is an application for creating, editing and publishing RSS feeds on Mac OS X. Version 1.2 introduces full support for working with the iTunes RSS extensions announced with iTunes 4.9, including an iTunes Music Store preview.

Feeder is packed with thoughtful features to enhance the experience of creating and managing feeds from start to finish including auto-complete and templates to save repetitive typing, automatically updating publication dates and much more. Feed content can be rich with images, links and formatting: Feeder’s editing features help you add these easily and generates a preview to show how your feed will look in a newsreader or RSS-aware browser.

Continue Reading »

The first time I heard that the Beatles’ AppleCorp had sued Apple Computer, Inc. back in 1981 over the “Apple” name, it stung. Then when AppleCorp and Apple Computer settled another lawsuit in 1989, I was somewhat disappointed that the Beatles felt entitled to additional financial compensation from Apple Computer. And now that AppleCorp is planning to take Apple Computer back to court for a third time, I am absolutely outraged.

As a product of the final years of baby-boomerdom (1960), I grew up listening to my two older brothers’ hand-me-down Beatles’ albums (ancient large music discs made of black vinyl plastic). When I was very young my older brother, Ted, had me convinced that Paul McCartney was the greatest man on earth (behind God and himself, of course). My friends and I would often pretend to be the Beatles, and I proudly took on the role of Ringo Starr and used an old tree stump as my drum set.

Continue reading at macfriends.com …

THOUGHT OUT has agreed, the best interest of the long-term success of the now named Ped™ product line is recognition away from the coincident relationship of iPed to the iPod. This new recognition of Ped™ branding will show the true value of our products. Our products work with many other devices on the market as the designs are intended to achieve greatest result with iPods but not limited to them only. Essentially, current and forward implementations of our products should be understood they are not only for iPods.

The Ped™ product line design is an elegant “device Ped-estal” that should function with many other consumer devices that consumers may desire.

iPed to Ped™
iPed2 to Ped2™
iPed Shuffle to Ped USB™

Look for the new branding name Ped™ as THOUGHT OUT quickly phases out the previous brand name.

Also, be sure to checkout the full lineup of “Ped” products at www.thoughtout.biz. And watch for a great new “Ped” coming soon.

A Brief and Warped History of the Mac, part 5 (in which the Mac is reborn)

Welcome back to my column – by now I’m sure only the dedicated Mac Geek will be with me so I can probably say whatever I like. Knickers.

Last time, we left the Mac in 1997 preparing a comeback, having bought NeXT, and in so doing regained Steve Jobs. The new PowerMac G3 had been launched and the PowerBook G3 was on its way.

But, what people were waiting for – well, what I was waiting for anyway – was a consumer Mac based on the G3 processor to replace the Performa range of computers. The machine we got was not what had been expected.

A few years before this, Apple had recruited a young British designer, Jonathon Ive to their design department to work on projects like the eMate (a laptop computer for schools based on the Newton) and Twentieth Anniversary Mac. Jobs approached Ive with plans for a machine that would return to the Mac’s roots and revolutionise the computer industry yet again. He wanted Ive to design the future – and it was going to be Bondi Blue.

Continue Reading »

TechPodCasts.com, the top technical audio podcast resource worldwide, announced today a first of its kind sponsorship deal with GotoMeeting.com, a Citrix Online product

Spokesperson Todd Cochrane says, what is significant is that this is the very first multi-podcast sponsorship deal. This agreement is a large win for our members and the techpodcasts.com network. A significant amount of work lead to getting to this day, with the network barely being 6 months old it is evident that when like minded podcasters come together and build a branded network, along with developing a legal marketable framework, with the necessary statistics reporting, then by presenting a well laid out marketing plan, we were able to sign this sponsorship deal. This solidifies our ideals that “podcasters do the work, and indeed podcasters get paid”.
Continue Reading »